ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Environ. Eng.
Sec. Water, Waste and Wastewater Engineering
This article is part of the Research TopicInnovative Approaches to PFAS Remediation: Non-Destructive and Destructive TechnologiesView all articles
A Structured Forensic Framework for PFAS Source Differentiation Under Target-Only Analytical Constraints
Provisionally accepted
- 1Jacobs Engineering, New York, United States
- 2Jacobs Technology Inc Houston, Houston, United States
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Differentiating overlapping sources of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) remains a central challenge in environmental forensics, particularly where investigations rely on targeted analytical datasets. Here, we present a tiered PFAS fingerprinting framework designed to extract source, process, and transport information using only target analytes reported under EPA Method 1633. The framework integrates multiple, complementary lines of evidence, including compound-level concentrations, class- and carbon-number-resolved composition, diagnostic ratios, isomer distributions, precursor-product relationships, multivariate clustering, and geospatial pattern analysis, to support defensible source differentiation under data-limited conditions. The framework is demonstrated using groundwater datasets collected at two time points (2018 and 2024) from a complex industrial setting with overlapping PFAS inputs. Application of the framework resolves distinct PFAS mixture archetypes that reflect differences in manufacturing era, formulation chemistry, and hydrologic context, including sulfonate-rich mixtures consistent with electrochemical fluorination-era inputs, telomer-associated industrial mixtures characterized by fluorotelomer sulfonates and carboxylates, and short-chain-enriched profiles influenced by wastewater-related transport and mixing. Temporal evaluation assesses changes between sampling events in precursor abundance and terminal perfluoro carboxylic acids, and evaluates whether diagnostic ratios and isomer patterns provide additional temporal context where they are quantifiable. Unsupervised clustering independently corroborates compositional similarity and hydraulic connectivity among site domains. Together, these results indicate that target-only PFAS datasets can support forensic interpretation when multiple, complementary analytical metrics are evaluated in a structured framework. The approach outlines an analytical structure that could assist PFAS investigations where source histories are complex and compound coverage is limited.
Keywords: Clustering analysis, Fingerprint, PFAS Sources, pfoa, PFOs, Source differentiation
Received: 12 Dec 2025; Accepted: 02 Feb 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Zenobio, Pazoki, Foresberg and Chiang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Sheau-Yun Dora Chiang
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